Very Interesting Documentary on Adolf Eichmann Trial

We're partway through (hope to finish tomorrow) a fascinating documentary on the 1961-62 trial and sentencing of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann from several years ago, called The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal. It's all footage from Eichmann's trial, without any commentary or explanations except those of the judge, prosectors, witnesses, and Eichmann himself. The footage was shot by a filmmaker named Leo Hurwitz (here's part of an interview with his son, Tom, who has done stuff for PBS) and this film was put together by another filmmaker (who wasn't even born at the time) named Eyal Sivan. It's well-worth viewing.

I wonder if the media handlers in Saddam's trial were going for the same effect as this trial, kind of like when they had Colin Powell Adlaicize the U.N. prior to the invasion of Iraq.

The doc says it is insipired by Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, a well-known work by philosopher Hannah Arendt, of which I have an unread (by me, anyway) copy right here. I might dig into that after I get myself to finish the unjustly procrastinated Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.

Here's a contemporary newsreel, here's a summary of how the Israeli Secret Service caught him, and here is practically every piece of documenation you could want on the 4 1/2-month-long trial.